Last winter, i had been watching some youtube videos by the hodge twins on intermittent fasting and felt inspired to try it myself. In a previous post, i talked about the routine i created and explained why i thought it was a good idea, based on months of research and a little personal experience prior. I decided to approach my intermittent fasting routine like a science experiment, and devoted myself to being as consistent with the routine as possible, as well as tracking my weight every day.

Here is an annotated plot of the weight data i collected using google fit:

I aimed to lose 25lbs but lost 27. I was pretty impressed with the fact that i could still lose weight at this pace, years after losing 80lbs doing a semi-lazy ketogenic diet and having the effort required to lose more weight exceed my willpower under that way of dieting. I lost weight at almost twice the speed doing intermittent fasting.

I posted my article about xenoestrogens to various sites and received a mixture of reactions ranging from ‘this is a load of pseudoscience bs’ to ‘holy shit, you’re right, thank you!’. All in all, this article has been the most popular article i have ever written in my short few months of serious blogging.

I wanted to thank both the haters and the appreciators of that article, right here. This spurred me to revise and improve the article. Those who criticized the article appeared to have valid points at first, and then i further researched what they were saying and found that my argument was actually on-point, and that the spectrum of external estrogen influence was even greater than i suspected. The article ended up being tempered in fire and came out stronger as a result.

For those who appreciated the article, i have a link dump of new and interesting information for you at the bottom of this article.

I have been doing some pretty heavy reading about hormones recently, after reading a study showing that milk was chock full of estrogen. This essay is designed to shine a light on a swath of the dietary and environmental sources of hormones that we ingest on a daily basis in today’s time, and why it is important that men and women avoid these extra hormones at all costs.

Bear with me, this is going to be a long ride down the rabbit hole, neo..

Design of OSes and webpages from 2010-present have been bugging me for quite a while. I have intentionally been avoiding upgrading from Windows 7 and prefer to browse websites with appealing pc-friendly designs ever since. It seems like desktop operating systems are now designed without desktops in mind, and websites are designed on desktops without desktops in mind in well.

I’m gonna try to make a case for why this sucks balls, from a long term power user perspective.

My local news station recently upgraded to a new ‘modern’ web design centered around mobile devices. While the decluttering may have helped, it is now devoid of color and interesting detail. The rest of the site has tons of blank space and bizarre font sizing. Which is more visually appealing to you?

The situation with energy

The United States, like many countries, have been dependent on fossil fuels since the extraction and use of it was invented. These energy-dense and economical forms of energy have dramatically increased the quality of life for the world at large.

( early cotton picking machine, circa 1886 )

Fossil fuels enabled the mechanical automation of dull, repetitive work such as farm labor, which was the primary reason that we were able to eliminate slavery in the western world earlier than most of the globe. ( notice that after the civil war, cotton was still available at prices everyone could afford? we had invented many machines to automate slave labor at a more economical price before, during, and after the civil war – slavery was outmoded by technology – not morality, unfortunately. )

Here it comes. The UK is getting the ball rolling on axing the best part of the internet – privacy, anonymity, and security – the core of what made the internet a free medium. As usual, we have the ‘because of the terrorists’ Justification. I wonder if criminals who seek to murder will follow the law? probably not, huh?

The UK’s prime minister, David Cameron, has re-iterated that the UK government does not intend to “leave a safe space—a new means of communication—for terrorists to communicate with each other.” This confirms remarks he made earlier this year about encryption, when he said: “The question is are we going to allow a means of communications which it simply isn’t possible to read. My answer to that question is: no, we must not.”

David Cameron was replying in the House of Commons on Monday to a question from the Conservative MP David Bellingham, who asked him whether he agreed that the “time has come for companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter to accept and understand that their current privacy policies are completely unsustainable?” To which Cameron replied: “we must look at all the new media being produced and ensure that, in every case, we are able, in extremis and on the signature of a warrant, to get to the bottom of what is going on.”

In light of recent censorship and controversy on Reddit, a new alternative to Reddit has came about at http://voat.co and has been gaining in popularity.

Recently, their hosting provider shut them down for allowing free speech, basically.

The reason they gave us when they notified us that they have cancelled our contract is “…we have received significant information that the content on your server includes political incorrect parts that are unacceptable for us.” and “Due to the fact that we cannot keep bond of trust to you as our customer…”.